Paywall

A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue, partly due to the use of ad blockers. In academics, research papers are often subject to a paywall and are available via academic libraries that subscribe.

Paywalls have also been used as a way of increasing the number of print subscribers; for example, some newspapers offer access to online content plus delivery of a Sunday print edition at a lower price than online access alone. Newspaper websites such as that of ''The Boston Globe'' and ''The New York Times'' use this tactic because it increases both their online revenue and their print circulation (which in turn provides more ad revenue).

History

In 1996, ''The Wall Street Journal'' set up and has continued to maintain a "hard" paywall. It continued to be widely read, acquiring over one million users by mid-2007, and 15 million visitors in March 2008.

In 2010, following in the footsteps of ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Times'' (London) implemented a "hard" paywall; a decision which was controversial because, unlike ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Times'' is a general news site, and it was said that rather than paying, users would seek the information without charge elsewhere. The paywall was deemed in practice to be neither a success nor a failure, having recruited 105,000 paying visitors. In contrast ''The Guardian'' resisted the use of a paywall, citing "a belief in an open Internet" and "care in the community" as its reasoning – an explanation found in its welcome article to online news readers who, blocked from ''The Times'' site following the implementation of their paywall, came to ''The Guardian'' for online news. ''The Guardian'' since experimented with other revenue-increasing ventures such as open API. Other papers, prominently ''The New York Times'', have oscillated between the implementation and removal of various paywalls. Because online news remains a relatively new medium, it has been suggested that experimentation is key to maintaining revenue while keeping online news consumers satisfied.

Some implementations of paywalls proved unsuccessful, and have been removed. Experts who are skeptical of the paywall model include Arianna Huffington, who declared "the paywall is history" in a 2009 article in ''The Guardian''. In 2010, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales reportedly called ''The Times's'' paywall "a foolish experiment." One major concern was that, with content so widely available, potential subscribers would turn to free sources for their news. The adverse effects of earlier implementations included decline in traffic and poor search engine optimization.

Paywalls have become controversial, with partisans arguing over the effectiveness of paywalls in generating revenue and their effect on media in general. Critics of paywalls include many businesspeople, academics such as media professor Jay Rosen, and journalists such as Howard Owens and media analyst Matthew Ingram of GigaOm. Those who see potential in paywalls include investor Warren Buffett, former ''Wall Street Journal'' publisher Gordon Crovitz, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Some have changed their opinions of paywalls. Felix Salmon of Reuters was initially an outspoken skeptic of paywalls, but later expressed the opinion that they could be effective. A NYU media theorist, Clay Shirky, was initially a skeptic of paywalls, but in May 2012 wrote, " ewspapersshould turn to their most loyal readers for income, via a digital subscription service of the sort the ew York Timeshas implemented." Paywalls are rapidly changing journalism, with an impact on its practice and business model, and on freedom of information on the Internet, that is yet unclear.

Types

Three high level models of paywall have emerged: ''hard paywalls'' that allow no free content and prompt the user straight away to pay in order to read, listen or watch the content, ''soft paywalls'' that allow some free content, such as an abstract or summary, and ''metered paywalls'' that allow a set number of free articles that a reader can access over a specific period of time, allowing more flexibility in what users can view without subscribing.

"Hard" paywalls

The "hard" paywall, as used by ''The Times'', requires paid subscription before any of their online content can be accessed. A paywall of this design is considered the riskiest option for the content provider. It is estimated that a website will lose 90% of its online audience and ad revenue only to gain it back through its ability to produce online content appealing enough to attract subscribers. News sites with "hard" paywalls can succeed if they:
*Provide added value to their content
*Target a niche audience
*Already dominate their own market
Many experts denounce the "hard" paywall because of its inflexibility, believing it acts as a major deterrent for users. Financial blogger Felix Salmon wrote that when one encounters a "paywall and can’t get past it, you simply go away and feel disappointed in your experience." Jimmy Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, argued that the use of a "hard" paywall diminishes a site's influence. Wales stated that, by implementing a "hard" paywall, ''The Times'' "made itself irrelevant." Though the ''Times'' had potentially increased its revenue, it decreased its traffic by 60%.

"Soft" paywalls

The "soft" paywall is best embodied by the metered model. The metered paywall allows users to view a specific number of articles before requiring paid subscription. In contrast to sites allowing access to select content outside the paywall, the metered paywall allows access to any article as long as the user has not surpassed the set limit. The ''Financial Times'' allows users to access 10 articles before becoming paid subscribers. ''The New York Times'' controversially implemented a metered paywall in March 2011 which let users view 20 free articles a month before paid subscription. In April 2012 ''New York Times'' reduced the number of free articles per month to 10. Their metered paywall has been defined as not only soft, but "porous," because it also allows access to any link posted on a social media site, and up to 25 free articles a day if accessed through a search engine.

The model is designed to allow the paper to "retain traffic from light users", which in turn allows the paper to keep their number of visitors high, while receiving circulation revenue from the site's heavy users. Using this model ''The New York Times'' garnered 224,000 subscribers in the first three months. While many proclaimed ''The New York Times'' paywall a success after it reported a profit in the third quarter of 2011, the profit increase is said to be "ephemeral" and "largely based on a combination of cutbacks and the sale of assets."

Google Search previously enforced a policy known as "First Click Free", whereby paywalled news websites were required to have a metered paywall for a minimum number of articles per-day (three, initially five) that could be accessed via results on Google Search or Google News. The site could still paywall other articles that were accessible via the page. This encouraged publications to allow their articles to be indexed by Google's web crawler, thus enhancing their prominence on Google Search and Google News. Sites that opted out of First Click Free were demoted in Google's rankings. Google discontinued the policy in 2017, stating that it provide additional tools for helping publications integrate subscriptions into its platforms.

Combination

A "softer" paywall strategy includes allowing free access to select content, while keeping premium content behind a paywall. Such a strategy has been said to lead to "the creation of two categories: cheap fodder available for free (often created by junior staffers), and more 'noble' content." This type of separation brings into question the egalitarianism of the online news medium. According to political and media theorist Robert A Hackett, "the commercial press of the 1800s, the modern world’s first mass medium, was born with a profound democratic promise: to present information without fear or favour, to make it accessible to everyone, and to foster public rationality based on equal access to relevant facts.".

''The Boston Globe'' implemented a version of this strategy in September 2011 by launching a second website, BostonGlobe.com, to solely offer content from the paper behind a hard paywall, aside from most sports content, which was kept open to compete against other local sports websites. The former ''Boston Globe'' website, Boston.com, was relaunched with a larger focus on community news, sports, and lifestyle content, as well as selected ''Boston Globe'' content. The paper's editor Martin Baron described the two services as "two different sites for two different kinds of reader – some understand hatjournalism needs to be funded and paid for. Other people just won't pay. We have a site for them." By March 2014 the site had over 60,000 digital subscribers; at that time, the ''Globe'' announced that it would replace the hard paywall with a metered system allowing users to read 10 articles without charge in any 30-day period. ''The Boston Globe'' editor Brian McGrory believed that an ability to sample the site's premium content would encourage more people to subscribe to the service. At the same time, McGrory also announced plans to give Boston.com a more distinct editorial focus, with a "sharper voice that better captures the sensibilities of Boston", while migrating other content by ''Globe'' writers, such as blogs from Boston.com to the paper's website, but keeping them freely available.

Reception

Industry

Professional reception to the implementation of paywalls has been mixed. Most discussion of paywalls centers on their success or failure as business ventures, and overlooks their ethical implications for maintaining an informed public. In the paywall debate there are those who see the implementation of a paywall as a "sandbag strategy" – a strategy which may help increase revenue in the short term, but not a strategy that will foster future growth for the newspaper industry. For the "hard" paywall specifically, however, there seems to be an industry consensus that the negative effects (loss of readership) outweigh the potential revenue, unless the newspaper targets a niche audience.

There are also those who remain optimistic about the use of paywalls to help revitalize floundering newspaper revenues. Those who believe implementing paywalls will succeed, however, continually buffer their opinion with contingencies. Bill Mitchell states that for a paywall to bring new revenue and not deter current readers, newspapers must: "invest in flexible systems, exploit their journalists' expertise in niche areas, and, crucially, offer readers their money's worth in terms of new value." The State of the News Media's 2011 annual report on American journalism makes the sweeping claim that: " survive financially, the consensus on the business side of news operations is that news sites not only need to make their advertising smarter, but they also need to find some way to charge for content and to invent new revenue streams other than display advertising and subscriptions." Even those who do not believe in the general success of paywalls recognize that, for a profitable future, newspapers must start generating more attractive content with added value, or investigate new sources of earning revenue.

Proponents of the paywall believe that it may be crucial for smaller publications to stay afloat. They argue that since 90 percent of advertising revenues are concentrated in the top 50 publishers, smaller operations can't necessarily depend on the traditional ad-supported free content model the way that larger sites can. Many paywall advocates also contend that people are more than willing to pay a small price for quality content. In a March 2013 guest post for VentureBeat, Malcolm CasSelle of MediaPass stated his belief that monetization would become "something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: people illpay for content, and that money goes back into making the overall content even better."

In April 2013 the Newspaper Association of America

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